Searches for Top Squark Pair Production with the CMS Detector at the LHC

by Verena Ingrid Martinez Outschoorn (Univ. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (US)), Verena Ingrid Martinez Outschoorn (Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (US))

Friday 3 Oct 2014, 14:00 → 15:00 US/Pacific

Madrone (SLAC)

Following the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, renewed emphasis has been placed on searches for evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM), particularly Supersymmetry (SUSY). Top squarks are the SUSY partners of the top quark, which due to its large mass plays an important role in understanding the higgs boson. In addition, top squarks can decay to a stable invisible new particle, a dark matter candidate. These new particles can be produced in high energy proton-proton collisions at the LHC, giving rise to events with SM particles and additional unbalanced energy. Searches targeting top squark pairs, using data collected in 2012 by the CMS experiment at the LHC, will be described, focusing on the challenge of separating the signal from the large background of SM top quark production. Future prospects for top squark searches will also be discussed.

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